Easy Button - The Conclusion

So, whatever happened with my search for the Easy Button? I'm sure you're dying to know "the rest of the story." I am too! I don't think there IS an end. But there's definitely a lesson in there somewhere. I've been praying for over a year now that God would "show me great and mighty things I do not know" in regard to my health, our business, and my marriage. If you've read previous posts, you know I have these "333" sightings all the time and use them to remind me of Jeremiah 33:3. Each time I see the triple 3's, I pray that request to God. The past 18 months have been very difficult and very uncomfortable. In my experience, if you keep trusting God through times like these, it usually results in God doing a great work in your life. But I'll admit it: I can be impatient. And God and I have had some pretty heated conversations over the past several months. I even asked HIM about the Easy Button. And here's what He told me:

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Matthew 11:28-30

He kept giving me that passage, and I didn't get it at first. But then I changed my outlook and decided to trust that God had a purpose in all of this. I still don't know everything He has planned, but I started to see that he'd been answering my prayers all along. Without the recent seriousness of my health condition, I don't think I would have had the motivation to take charge of my health like I have. After just a few months, I have seen amazing improvements in my body. I believe there are better days ahead. When we moved from our beautiful home, I was hurt and angry. But the house we live in now is within 15 minutes of our clients and my doctors. And we live within a few miles of all the health food stores where I do a lot of my food shopping. We have a much smaller yard and home to take care of. This has taken a huge amount of stress off my husband, who had to drive at least an hour to get home from work every day, to take me to the doctor, and to make a special trip out here to get the food I need from the health food store. If I have an emergency at home, he can get to me in minutes, and he's been getting home earlier each evening.

There have been some other opportunities in the area of our business that have opened up because of our move, although we're still waiting to see how God works this out. And although I still don't have the answers about why we don't seem to have a support system in our lives to help out with the heavy burden my health puts on our lives, I am hopeful that the Lord will give us His divine revelation on practical ways we can lessen that burden on my husband's life. God has blessed me with the opportunity to work with a Christian life coach, and she gave me a great word picture to give me hope in this area. She explained that people often say, "that's the last straw," in referring to that circumstance that causes someone to say like Popeye, "That's all I can stands; I can't stands no more!" But what if we could remove things, one straw at a time - one burden at a time? We don't have to solve all our problems with some big epiphany all at once. Sometimes it's just one little solution at a time. And that sounds do-able to me.

So, although I didn't find a big red button to push, I'm starting to understand that quiet voice that keeps telling me, "Give it to Me; let Me carry that weight for you. Just rest in My loving arms and trust." His yoke is easy, and His burden is light.

How the Church Can Minister to the Chronically Ill

Ministering to the Chronically Ill: 20 Ways That Take 20 Minutes
by Lisa Copen

Rest Ministries (www.restministries.com), the largest Christian organization that specifically serves the chronically ill, recently did a survey and asked people to "List some of the programs or resources a church could offer to make it more inviting and comfortable." They have provided a sampling of some of the 800+ responses, all of which could be done in 20 minutes or less.

1. Encouragement emails.
2. Make sure the handicapped stalls in the restroom are functioning and clean.
3. Padded chairs or cushions, room for wheelchairs, and plenty of room for my family to sit with me.
4. Be open-minded about a support group for the chronically ill like HopeKeepers. It would make me feel very special, knowing that there is an understanding of people's needs that are not always visible.
5. Add more disabled parking, even if they are temporary spots.
6. Educate the ushers that people arriving late may have difficulty walking or getting out of cars and will need some assistance.
7. Ask volunteers to call people with chronic illness just to check on them when they don't make it to services.
8. When suppers are given, recognize that I may need help getting my meal--or at least understand that I won't be able to wait in a long line.
9. Be gentle when giving people big hugs. It can topple over or hurt a person.
10. Have a video tape of the service, not just a live web cast. Not all our computers work that well.
11. Make sure that the church doors aren't too difficult to open or at least have mechanical assistance if they're unusually heavy.
12. Stop telling me that if I really believed and had faith I would be healed by now. Please don't insist how good I look, because I know for a fact that I look terrible and miserable that day.
13. Offer me ways to serve within the church that can be performed regularly, but not on a set schedule. I still want to contribute, but I need some flexibility so that I can do a job when I feel well enough to do so.
14. Have sermon notes available so I can listen later or even just review what I didn't catch the first time.
15. Acknowledge National Invisible Chronic Illness Awareness Week. Rest Ministries has a nice book list of top 100 Christian books for the chronically ill. It would make a nice display in your bookstore that week.
16. Just mention chronic illness occasionally! Don't forget to talk about it in sermons as one of the challenges many people face just like unemployment or divorce.
17. Have Christian volunteers from church that will clean house for small fee. Some have offered to clean my house, but I cannot accept charity yet, but neither can I afford to pay a regular house cleaning service.
18. Help with some of the small costs of providing encouraging books and resources for the church library the chronically ill can check out.
19. Remember how many caregivers are in the church, not just caregiving for their parents, but also for their spouses or ill children.
20. Have copies of sermons for free on CD or computer.
Find over 500 ways to encourage a chronically ill friend in the book "Beyond Casseroles: 505 Ways to Encourage a Chronically Ill Friend" at www.beyondcasseroles.com
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I know that some days can seem like more than you can handle. Remember that the Lord promises to never leave you or forsake you. Cling to that. Even when you don't feel his presence He is still there. I tell my 6-year-old son that God is working "under cover." I know I am each day, especially righr now!

Blessings,

Lisa Copen, Rest Ministries Founder
Rest Ministries Chronic Illness Pain Support

Easy Button - Continued

The whole object of my going up to Michigan to be with my family was to give my husband a break from being my full-time caregiver and to get a "jump-start" on my new "detox" program, right? It was supposed to be like the Easy Button. But I think we pressed the wrong button. Because shortly after I got to Michigan we found out that we were going to have to move.

Now, in order to understand the full impact this news had on us, you would have to know a few things: 1) We have moved A LOT in our ten years of marriage; probably more than most people move in a lifetime, and we were DONE with moving. 2)Our house and our property was our "dream house." We had always talked about living on 10 acres out in the country, but we thought we would have to find a piece of land and slowly build a home on it. But when we first drove up to this house, I just could not believe it; the perfect piece of land with a beautiful house already built on it! So we had poured our hearts into this home and this land. We painted most of the rooms and even painted a football field on the wall of the office, where we hung all of our football memorabilia. My husband laid a beautiful paver patio, with a walkway leading out to the pool we put in. He made me a prayer garden under a big tree in the front yard. We had stocked our pond with hundreds of fish and had been feeding them every night and watching them grow. My husband had made me a tree swing in the back yard. We had planted trees in memorial to the babies we had lost. We had fallen in love with our home and put down roots for the FIRST time in our marriage. This was devastating. 3)We had less than 3 weeks to pack up and move, and we had no where to move. 4)I was in no condition to pack, and I was 1000 miles away!

I think I cried for 48 hours straight. And I spent the next few weeks with a giant knot in my stomach and a sharp pain in my chest. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. I couldn't even pray. I could not fathom why God would allow this to happen to us in the midst of all of the other major things we were experiencing. And I remember thinking, "One of us is going to have a heart attack or a nervous breakdown." I honestly was afraid for my husband's emotional well-being; he'd already been at his breaking point before we got this latest news. I mean, that's why I was in Michigan in the first place. He was already overwhelmed, and the last thing he needed was to make the biggest move of our lives ALL BY HIMSELF. I shared my concerns with a couple of people from my church and even asked them to please check in with him because I was so concerned. NOT A SINGLE PERSON FROM OUR CHURCH CONTACTED EITHER OF US IN ANY WAY DURING THOSE 3 WEEKS THAT WE WERE GOING THROUGH SOME OF THE MOST DIFFICULT DAYS OF OUR LIVES. NOT ONE. This broke my heart even more.

To Be Continued...

Where's The Easy Button?

These past few months have been very hard. My health continued to get progressively worse, we were losing a lot of business and were still unable to pay ourselves a regular income all this year, and my poor husband just could not get a break from all the stress and responsibility of running a struggling business, being a caregiver to his wife, and basically taking care of everything that needs done to run a household. On top of all my other health problems, my doctors decided that I have a serious liver disease that was affecting my heart and would apparently eventually kill me. The worst part was that my husband and I were dealing with all of this alone. Despite moving our church membership to a church closer to home, we had not been able to connect with anyone in the church and still had no support system in dealing with all of this. We were burned out, stressed out, and just plain out of ideas on where to turn or what to do. And all I kept thinking about in my mind was, "We really need one of those 'Easy Buttons'!" You know: the ones from the office supply store commercial where you just press that big red Easy Button and help rains down upon you from the sky.

I felt like my husband I and were literally on fire in the middle of a crowd, and that we were jumping up and down hollering for help while everyone in the crowd just walked on by, talking and laughing and going about their business. We just felt like everything was falling apart and no help was in sight. I know that everyone deals with problems and struggles in life, but we were constantly being hit with one after the other. And then my health status went from "deteriorating" to "crisis" mode with the latest news about my liver and heart. And we knew something had to change drastically. So I made an executive decision that I was gonna get off as many pharmaceuticals as possible in order to give my liver a break, fire all my doctors except for my primary and my narcolepsy specialist, and I was going to detox my body and really focus on putting natural, healthy things in.

This type of program takes a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of support and help, and a lot of energy. I certainly had the time, but none of the other things. And the way I was eating, which was the most important part of my "treamtent" (Phase One antifungal diet from knowthecause.com) required that almost everything be made "from scratch. That means nothing that comes in a can, a bottle, a package, or from a restaurant. I'm talking about the kind of cooking where you have to use every kitchen appliance, utensil, pot, and pan you own just to make one meal. I didn't mind the restrictions on eating so much, but I was literally to the point where I could barely stand up for more than a couple minutes at a time. There were times when I would start to black out whenever I stood up and I barely had enough strength to walk 10 feet. There were a few occasions where I barely made it into the kitchen, so weak and shaky that I had to just lie down on the kitchen floor for 15-20 minutes until I could get what I came in there for. And if I could muster the strength to prepare myself some kind of food, there was NO WAY I could clean up the mess I had made. So I would just have to leave it. Me. Leave a mess.

After coming home finding me lying on the floor, not having eaten or drank anything all day, my husband realized we couldn't do this all by ourselves anymore. So he asked my dad to drive 20 hours down from Michigan to take me up there for a few weeks so that my parents could help out. So I packed bags, boxes, and coolers full of food; all kinds of kitchen appliances and utensils; our puppy, his food, his kennel and other paraphernalia; and enough clothes and stuff to last a month. We had no idea when I would be able to come back home. And it was a tearful, anxious goodbye.

To Be Continued...